Monday: We're doing an external penetration test for a social housing company. We didn't get behind the main firewall, but we did discover that the firewall's remote administrator access was password protected - and the password was 'letmein'. This is a weakness rather than a critical flaw, but it did cause some red faces in the company's IT department. It also highlights just how frequently weak passwords crop up. We always recommend that passwords should include a mix of letters and numbers, upper and lower case and should be as random as possible. Also, firewall external administrator access should be switched off - security is more important than convenience in this case.

By David Beesley at BIOS.

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